Apocalyptic Tragicomedy for a Jacobean Audience

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Apocalyptic Tragicomedy for a Jacobean Audience:
Dekker’s Whore of Babylon and Shakespeare’s Cymbeline
gretchen e. minton
Montana State University
Cet article place The Whore of Babylon de Dekker et le Cymbeline de Shakespeare
dans la tradition de la tragi-comédie apocalyptique. Cette catégorie générique
offre une façon de considérer ces deux pièces de théâtre comme des exemples du
drame apocalyptique jacobéen, un genre qui, d’une part repose sur le dualisme
inhérent à l’apocalypse, et d’autre part pointe vers une résolution du conflit en de-
hors du temps lui-même. La tragi-comédie apocalyptique s’est développée chez les
auteurs protestants du XVIe siècle tels que John Fox, qui considérait l’apocalypse
comme une tragédie pour les damnés, mais comme une tragi-comédie pour ceux
qui seraient sauvés à la fin des temps. La popularité de ce genre au début du XVIIe
siècle peut non seulement être mise en lien avec la politique de Jacques et avec les
changements esthétiques de goût en matière de théâtre, mais peut également être
mise en lien avec un renouvèlement de l’intérêt pour l’apocalypse, en particulier
après la Conspiration des Poudres. Dekker et Shakespeare souligne le modèle de
la tragi-comédie, en se concentrant sur deux aspects centraux du genre : l’exégèse
apocalyptique et la lecture de l’histoire. La différence de leur approche se trouve
dans le fait que Dekker insiste sur la fin des temps, alors que Shakespeare refuse
d’aller au-delà de la confusion apocalyptique caractérisant le passage d’un temps
vers l’autre.
We project ourselves—a small, humble elect, perhaps—past the End, so as to see the
structure whole, a thing we cannot do from our spot of time in the middle.
–Frank Kermode1
In Henry V, as the Hostess recounts Falstaff’s dying words, she concedes that
he “did in some sort, indeed, handle women,” but adds that at those times “he
was rheumatic, and talked of the Whore of Babylon.”2 As the sixteenth century
drew to its close, the humorous image of Falstaff ranting about the Whore of
Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 36.1, Winter / hiver 2013
129
130 gretchen e. minton
Babylon might seem a fitting end to the serious apocalyptic talk that had char-
acterized so much of the English Reformation. Yet in 1603 England inherited
a monarch who had already written a commentary on the book of Revelation
and who was deeply appreciative of its power.3 The literature of the first decade
of James’s reign is likewise rife with apocalypticism. Shakespeare was never to
mention the Whore of Babylon again after Henry V, but the apocalyptic el-
ements in many of his Jacobean plays (especially Lear, Antony & Cleopatra,
The Tempest, and Cymbeline) have long been noticed, though they seem far
removed from the religious context of the previous century’s interest in the
apocalypse. Thomas Dekker, on the other hand, not only mentioned the Whore
of Babylon, but entitled a play after her in 1607. This play can easily be seen as
an inheritor of the Protestant apocalyptic tradition, resurrecting some of its
most polemical characteristics for a Jacobean audience.
Although Dekker and Shakespeare, at first blush, seem to be engaged in
entirely different dramatic enterprises, they were concurrently writing a genre
that could be termed “apocalyptic tragicomedy.” While much has been said in
recent years about the extremely diverse umbrella of tragicomedy,4 I would
like to focus on how a certain strain of this genre is closely connected to the
apocalyptic tradition established by English Protestants in the sixteenth cen-
tury. Seeing The Whore of Babylon and Cymbeline as apocalyptic tragicomedies
enables us to focus on how such Jacobean plays rely upon the dualism inherent
in apocalyptic struggle, while also gesturing toward a resolution that is outside
of time itself. In order to understand how Shakespeare and Dekker worked
with this genre in characteristically different ways, it is necessary first to trace
the origin of apocalyptic tragicomedy, both as an imaginative concept and as a
kind of drama that inevitably engaged not just with theology, but with politics.
The sixteenth-century apocalypse
Toward the end of the book of Revelation, the wicked see the destruction of
their city, crying, “Babylon the great is fallen” (Rev. 18:2).5 This lament for the
destruction of earthly realms has always placed Revelation in an uneasy relation
to monarchical powers. The fact that apocalypticism became so important to
English Protestants was thus undoubtedly related to the political mood of the
Henrician and Marian exilic communities, for the centrality of the Apocalypse in
Apocalyptic Tragicomedy for a Jacobean Audience 131
the English Protestant tradition found its strongest articulation in exiles such as
John Bale and John Foxe.6 However, it would be a mistake to assume that apoca-
lyptic rhetoric is entirely at odds with monarchical powers. Bale’s The Image of
both Churches (ca. 1545), written during the Henrician exile, predicts the coming
apocalypse with absolute faithfulness, though it does conclude with praise for the
king, who “hath so sore wounded the beaste.”7 As long as the monarch could be
co-opted as part of the eternal struggle between the forces of good and evil, the
symbols of the Apocalypse resonate with full force. Yet these mysterious symbols,
as John of Patmos himself learns, are stubbornly resistant to exegesis.
The Apocalypse is associated with the end times, but its primary preoccu-
pation is the reading of signs (the literal “unveiling” that this word means). The
main directive of this reading, for English Protestants, was the proper interpre-
tation of history—specifically, the history of two diametrically opposed com-
munities. One of the clearest models of such apocalyptic thinking appears on
the frontispiece to John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, first published in 1563 (see
Figure 1). Two phrases from the gospel of Matthew’s 25th chapter form the top
of the page, indicating the fates of the saved and the damned: “come ye blessed”
on the left, and “go ye cursed” on the right. The bulk of the picture is situated
in two columns, which are best read from bottom to top; they are labelled “the
persecuted church” and “the persecuting church,” paralleling the saved and the
damned respectively. At the bottom left, the believers faithfully read Bibles and
listen to the Word of God; at the bottom right, the Catholics engage in supersti-
tious ceremonies with rosaries. At the next level, the believers are pictured as
martyrs tied to the stake, yet resolutely blowing trumpets toward heaven. The
unbelievers opposite blow trumpets as well, but these are directed at the raising
of the Eucharistic host. At the next level, the martyrs from the left panel have
become saints, crowned on a cloud and continuing to blow trumpets and wave
palms toward heaven (as in Rev. 7:9). On the right side, a disordered array of
demonic creatures (most of them tonsured) aims its trumpets downward. The
image’s dualism is discontinued at the top panel, where Christ sits in judgment
over both sides—showing that this harsh discord and opposition which char-
acterizes the history of both churches is ultimately part of a single providential
plan. In this one picture we see the salient features of Protestant apocalyptic:
a reading of history that shows diametrically opposed churches (one faithful
and persecuted, and the other devilish and persecuting), along with a belief
that the division is only a by-product of time, because everything is ultimately
132 gretchen e. minton
controlled by the unifying force of God. Thus, although history itself is divided,
and these divisions are in a sense made permanent by the eternal fates of the
saved and the damned, when seen from the End sacred history is in fact ab-
solutely unified, containing the damned as a necessary category. This vision is
post-apocalyptic in the sense that it takes the viewers beyond time, showing a
divine perspective that subsumes any notion of division.8 This is the dramatic
view of the apocalypse that gained the most imaginative power for English
Protestants, and it is absolutely characteristic of the works that grew out of the
mid-sixteenth century and continued into the Elizabethan period.
My primary interest here is in how this apocalypticism is both imagined
as drama and staged as drama. Repeatedly, theatrical metaphors emerge to
describe apocalyptic history, as is the case with Thomas Beard’s The Theatre
of God’s Judgments (1597), in which he imagines the inevitable justice meted
out on the wicked at the end of time in dramatistic terms.9 Yet several decades
earlier, both Bale and Foxe were not just imagining the apocalypse as drama,
but writing it as one. While much could be said about how Bale’s dramas are
infused with the apocalypticism that we would expect from the author of the
Image of both Churches,10 I would like to use Foxe’s more sustained apocalyptic
play, Christus Triumphans, as the best example of apocalyptic tragicomedy in
the sixteenth century.
When Foxe wrote Christus Triumphans in 1556, he sought to trace all of
ecclesiastical history, from the apostolic church to the present.11 The main char-
acter of this drama is Ecclesia, the true church. The play follows the careers of
Peter and Paul and their accompanying struggles at the hands of Nomocrates
(law) and Dioctes (a persecutor of Christians); then Ecclesia explains that after
the time of Constantine the church enjoyed relative peace for 1,000 years. The
bulk of the drama takes place after this millennium, when Satan is released; at
this point he immediately calls forth Pseudamnus (false lamb), whose job is to
imitate Christ while secretly furthering Satan’s agenda. His partner in crime is
Pornapolis, the Whore of Babylon. Despite the initial success of these agents
of evil, they eventually lose ground because, as Pornapolis laments, “The dregs
of the people are starting to be wise now. What’s more, they’re even weighing
our traditions in the scales of the gospel” (5.3; 347). Once the people’s eyes are
opened, Ecclesia’s cause gains ground, and she is able to be united with her chil-
dren, Africa and Europus. At the end of the play, a chorus of virgins dress Ecclesia
for her wedding and sing an epithalamion to celebrate the coming nuptials.
Apocalyptic Tragicomedy for a Jacobean Audience 133
Foxe published this Latin play in Basel, possibly intending it for a univer-
sity performance, and he termed it an “apocalyptic comedy.”12 This was an apt
moniker because of Foxe’s view of history: despite the periods of trial that the
church has endured since its inception, the apocalyptic promise assures a happy
ending at the end of time itself, when the divisions of history eventually dis-
solve in favour of a single providential vision, as is outlined on the frontispiece
of Acts and Monuments. The bulk of Christus Triumphans, however, focuses on
the times of trial before this resolution; because of its emphasis on the disor-
dered and divided nature of history before the final judgment, the play is more
of an apocalyptic tragicomedy than a comedy.
When Sidney first commented on tragicomedy in his Defence of Poesy, he
was referring to the “mongrel” combination of tragedy and comedy, of which
he certainly did not approve.13 While Sidney would not have had Foxe in mind,
Christus Triumphans self-consciously combines such elements, intentionally
engaging in what we might term generic hybridization. In addition to the mix-
ing of tragedy and comedy, the play also crosses other generic boundaries; as
Richard Bauckham notes, “Allegorical figures, superhuman spirits, good and
bad, and historical personages freely converse together and interact … with
no sense of incongruity.”14 The mixing of character types, like the mixing of
genres, seeks to open up all history into a totalizing discourse.15 More and more
examples are gathered as evidence to replay the same plot: the struggle between
the two churches that will end only with time itself. In this way, all other dis-
courses are subsumed under this one story.
This generic mixture is typical of apocalyptic works in the late Elizabethan
period as well. In both Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Thomas Kyd’s Spanish
Tragedy we see a mixture of styles and codes, a murky world where reading is
difficult, and a preoccupation with the right reading of history (especially of
England’s central role in it). Frank Ardolino sees a parallel between Christus
Triumphans and Kyd’s drama because “In its combination of mystery, moral-
ity, and chronicle, of classical, medieval, and Renaissance forms, of biblical,
church, and English history, and of historical and allegorical characters, Foxe’s
drama novum exerts a direct influence on the syncretistic nature of The Spanish
Tragedy.”16 If we take The Spanish Tragedy as an instructive parallel, we’ll no-
tice that it is particularly interested in the divine gaze, which is provided by
the character-spectators, Revenge and the ghost of Don Andrea. Thus, these
dramas all provide an apocalyptic “bird’s eye” view that enables the audience
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to put the tragedy into a larger perspective. Nonetheless, such a perspective is
necessarily imperfect when given to mortals.17 Put another way, the clarity on
Foxe’s frontispiece to Acts and Monuments is a clarity provided only by the di-
vine gaze. The rest of us, to varying degrees, find our vision blurred because of
our inability, as Kermode writes, “to see the structure whole, a thing we cannot
do from our spot of time in the middle.”18
Given the myopia of humans, apocalyptic dramas engage in teaching their
audience members how to interpret history correctly. For instance, in Christus
Triumphans, when Pseudamnus attempts to imitate Christ, the members of the
true church must struggle to discern truth from fiction—such correct exegesis,
in fact, becomes a matter of eternal salvation or damnation. This play has a
strongly didactic function, leading the audience members in lessons of proper
interpretation so that they will be better equipped to make their way through
the confusing entanglements of a world on the edge of the end times, but not
yet clearly delineated.
The Jacobean apocalypse
As I have been demonstrating up to this point, the sixteenth-century apocalyp-
ticism that was characteristic of Bale, Foxe, and others was by its very nature
tragicomic, and this imaginative space for apocalyptic tragicomedy continued
to resonate in later Elizabethan texts. Nonetheless, it has long been recognized
that the genre that we know as tragicomedy is largely a Jacobean phenomenon,
so I would like to return to the question of how the sixteenth-century notion
of apocalyptic tragicomedy was translated into the Jacobean period. The best
place to begin this exploration is, paradoxically, with another Elizabethan
text—a commentary on chapter 20 of Revelation, written in 1588 by James VI
of Scotland himself. In this work, A Fruitful Meditation, James focuses specifi-
cally on this section of Revelation in order to provide a reading of apocalyptic
signs that outlines the trials of the true church from the release of Satan until
the present day. Unapologetically embracing the Protestant exegetical tradition,
James writes: “The Pope is Antichrist, and Poperie the loosing of Satan, from
whom proceedeth false doctrine & crueltie to subvert the kingdom of Christ.”19
As he carefully traces his interpretation from the words to their meaning to
what should be learned, James consistently emphasizes the contrast between
Apocalyptic Tragicomedy for a Jacobean Audience 135
the false and true churches, which is also the contrast between those who be-
siege and those who are besieged.20 Thus his exegesis is an assurance to the
persecuted flock that eventually their sufferings will end (after the “unhappy
success” of Satan following his brief reign).21
James’s interest in the Apocalypse did not die once he became the king
of England; in fact, a complete commentary on Revelation was part of the
Workes he published in 1616.22 In both the 1588 and the 1616 expositions of
Revelation, James’s view was very much in keeping with other apocalyptic
thinkers; he believed that Revelation was the key to interpreting all of Scripture
as well as distant and more recent events: “of all the Scriptures, the Booke of the
REVELATION is the most meete for this our last aage” (Meditation, 73). For
James, Revelation is of paramount importance because it points the way to an
exegesis that is dependent only upon the Scriptures, because “the greatest part
of all the words, verses, and sentences of this booke are taken and borrowed of
other parts of the Scripture” and thus “we are taught to use onley Scripture for
interpretation of Scripture” (Meditation, 80). This view anticipates his steadfast
belief that the Scriptures are sufficient in themselves and should not be clut-
tered with marginal references as in the Geneva Bible.23 But if Scripture is going
to be sufficient, it also must be understood, or unveiled, which is why interpret-
ing the Apocalypse is particularly necessary.24
Although Sidney, as we noted earlier, referred to tragicomedy as a literary
genre (a tradition going back to antiquity), it is interesting to note that the first
recorded usage of the word in English occurs in Sir Thomas North’s edition of
Plutarch (1595), in order to describe a particular life’s history: “His acts…may
plainly shew, that all that was but a Tragi-comedy ceremoniously ended.”25 In
this case, individual lives can be read as part of a larger tragicomic plot; such
a totalizing reading, importantly, leads to a moral lesson. King James likewise
used the term to articulate a providential reading of the Gunpowder Plot. It
was, he explains, “Tragedie to the Traitors, but Tragicomedie to the King and
all his trew Subiects.”26 At this moment James embodies what we identified as
an integral part of sixteenth-century apocalypticism: to read history from a
long perspective, acknowledging the tragedy for the damned, but the ultimate
tragicomedy for the saved. The Puritan clergyman Richard Bernard made the
same point in his commentary on Revelation, the Key of Knowledge (1617):
“The Lord by certain formes, shapes, and figures, as it were Images and picture,
did lively represent the whole Comicall tragedie, or tragicall Comedie, that was
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from the time of the revealing of the Revelation to be acted upon the stage of
this world by the Church militant.”27 Bernard goes on to explain that this bibli-
cal book gives us a key to history “till all be fulfilled, and this tragicall Comedie
bee ended.” The repeated use of “tragical comedy” to describe the apocalypse
illustrates a continuity with the previous century. As was the case with Beard’s
Theatre of God’s Judgements, the metaphor of drama and the tragicomic scope
of apocalyptic history appear together.
Staging the apocalypse as Jacobean tragicomedy
But what of the tragicomedy that was not just a dramatic metaphor, but an
emerging dramatic genre in the first decade of James’s reign? It is my conten-
tion that the links between apocalypse and tragicomedy are carried into the
staged drama of the seventeenth century, in both overtly Protestant works such
as Dekker’s Whore of Babylon and secular dramas like Cymbeline.
Apocalyptic drama focuses upon moments of crisis—thus Foxe’s Christus
Triumphans was written in response to the Marian exile, and Kyd’s The Spanish
Tragedy to the Spanish Armada. In both cases, of course, the writing of the
work is late enough to offer a celebratory perspective. If the defeat of the
Spanish Armada was an apt moment for English Protestants to combine their
interest in apocalyptic history with their praise of the monarch,28 the analogous
event in the Jacobean period was undoubtedly the discovery of the Gunpowder
Plot. To look at Thomas Dekker’s The Whore of Babylon (ca. 1607) is to see
this connection made explicit. Though a Jacobean play with several allusions to
the Gunpowder Plot, Dekker’s The Whore of Babylon is a sprawling historical
allegory that depicts the reign of Elizabeth as a series of events that embody the
struggle between the forces of good (Titania, or the Fairie Queen) and those
of evil (the Empress, or Whore of Babylon). This Elizabethan setting lays the
foundation for a historical apocalypse that is simultaneously about Elizabeth’s
reign and about James’s.29
The play opens with a dumb show in which bishops and cardinals mourn
at a dead queen’s hearse while her bereft councillors sing in Latin. Truth awakes
and pulls the veils from the councillors’ eyes, and then they follow Titania, the
Fairie Queen, who is attended by Truth and Time. As she kisses a book, her
attendants cheer, brandishing their swords and “vowing to defend her and that
Apocalyptic Tragicomedy for a Jacobean Audience 137
book.”30 The rest of this apocalyptic play gives an episodic account of the trials
of Elizabeth’s reign using the allegorical framework of a struggle between the
Empress and Titania. By depicting the machinations of the triple-crown-wear-
ing Empress and her followers, which involve many attempts on Titania’s life,
The Whore of Babylon traces the struggle between the true and false churches.31
Titania is modelled on the woman clothed with the sun (also known as the
woman in the wilderness) from Revelation 12, and Dekker shows how she and
the Whore of Babylon embody diametrically opposed models of femininity.
Both women are cast as mothers, but whereas Titania’s maternity is nurturing,
the Empress’ is poisonous. One of the kings suggests that he and his fellows
should “Fly to our Empress’ bosom: there suck treason, / Sedition, heresies,
confederacies…” (1.2.280–81).32 Each plot to destroy Titania is foiled in turn,
and the play’s ending shows the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the triumph
of Titania, with the accompanying lament of the Empress: “Great Babylon thus
low never did fall” (5.6.160)—a direct allusion to Revelation 18, and a comic
resolution to the struggle between the two churches.
Although Dekker does not announce The Whore of Babylon as this genre,
it seems to follow, as Julia Gasper has argued, in the tradition of comoedia
apocalyptica that Foxe established in his earlier play.33 Once again, however,
a more precise description of these dramas would be “apocalyptic tragicom-
edy,” because Dekker emphasizes the periods of trial before the resolution for
the faithful. While Revelation, especially as viewed by the radical Protestants,
might have the tendency to evoke division and call in question the efficacy
of earthly powers, Dekker’s interpretation elucidates how it was possible to
carry on Elizabethan assumptions about the apocalypse while highlighting the
tragicomic framework that celebrated the end of division through the glories
of James, the Phoenix “of larger wing, / Of stronger talon, of more dreadful
beak,” chosen to be the one who could have “so large of grip / That it may shake
all Babylon” (3.1.252ff). James himself becomes the unifying force who will
bring about the end of all historical division; in this sense, his power is not
just monarchical, but divine, and his rule is fashioned as one that oversees the
apocalypse and presides over the millennial peace.
This allegorical apocalyptic drama might seem worlds away from
Shakespeare’s oeuvre, especially if we consider it next to Jacobean plays such as
Macbeth or Antony & Cleopatra. However, as Dekker’s drama was playing at the
Fortune Theatre, the work of Shakespeare’s that was enjoying success across the
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river at the Globe was Pericles. This episodic world of tragedy, mystery, magic,
and reunion owes much to classical models, as do all of Shakespeare’s Romances.
Nonetheless, it is important to remember that the medieval Christian dramatic
tradition provided an influential model as well, especially given the tragicomic
preoccupation with providential order and metaphors of rebirth and resurrec-
tion.34 Shakespeare’s plays take their characters through tragedy to a rebirth and
a comic resolution, while focusing on providential direction through protago-
nists such as Prospero or surprise visitors such as Jupiter in act 5 of Cymbeline.
During this period Shakespeare found use for apocalyptic elements that
fit naturally with the tragicomic structure and enhanced the imaginative land-
scapes of the plays. In Cymbeline, the most striking of these is reflected in the
peregrinations of Imogen. Like Ecclesia in Christus Triumphans or Una in the
The Faerie Queene, Imogen is an innocent lamb who flees into the wilderness to
avoid a wicked pursuer and is eventually restored, by providence, to her rightful
role as a bride.35 In Revelation, this period of darkness is the necessary trial for
the faithful before they are restored to their rightful place, which in the mean
time has been usurped by the beast and the whore. In the interstices, apocalyp-
tic texts focus on the problem of hermeneutics.
Apocalyptic exegesis
Because the book of Revelation is not just about the end of the world, but
about the unveiling of signs, exegetes invariably focus on the proper reading
of these signs. In Revelation, John of Patmos watches as mysterious symbols
appear before his eyes and he is guided by various angels to a correct interpreta-
tion of these symbols. We even see him making errors, bowing down when
he shouldn’t, and receiving lessons. The opening dumb show of The Whore of
Babylon foregrounds this idea of “unveiling” when Truth removes the veils from
the councillors’ eyes and they realize that they have been following the wrong
queen and wrong religion. Later we learn that the character Plain Dealing was
one of the misguided, for he once looked on Falsehood as “the goodliest woman
that ever wore forepart of satin” (4.1.68–70). In order to educate him, Truth and
Time help him interpret the dumb show at the beginning of act 4. Despite the
resemblance between Truth and Falsehood, Plain Dealing learns that the latter
has a spotted face and is riddled with venereal disease.